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Balancing Dollars & Demand

By Charlene O’Hanlon

09/01/07

How do IT administrators prod their IT budgets to meet
institutional goals? Four intrepid campus tech leaders
share their concerns, woes, and triumphs. Listen in.

When it comes to building and maintaining
a cutting-edge infrastructure on a
limited budget, nobody knows more about
the pain points, challenges, and workarounds
than the IT professionals tasked
with overseeing campus IT. In a recent roundtable
discussion with Campus Technology contributing
writer Charlene O'Hanlon, four IT administrators—James Stoner,
director of scientific computing at the University of Denver (CO); Steve
Engorn, CIO of Villa Julie College (MD); Ryan Laus, network manager at
Central Michigan University; and Stan Gatewood, CISO of The University
of Georgia—all shared their experiences and advice for peers.

The schools they represent are diverse:
The University of Denver has around
5,000 students, undergrad and graduate,
and nearly 1,000 staff and faculty. It has
a fairly large IT network infrastructure,
and a campus laptop initiative that is pivotal
to maintaining a conservative IT
budget (students must bring their own
laptops to the university). Villa Julie College,
with two campuses just outside of
Baltimore, has a full-time enrollment of
2,500, with another 400 or 500 part-time,
evening, and online students. The college's
current focus is academic, not
research. Central Michigan University
lies in the heart of Michigan, in the small
city of Mount Pleasant. The university
boasts 20,000 students on campus at the
main site, another 8,000 students at offcampus
sites, and around 50 sites worldwide.
The University of Georgia, with a
600-plus-acre main campus, is located in
Athens, and is an undergraduate, graduate,
and doctoral R1 institution, with
heavy emphasis on research. There are
approximately 35,000 students and
10,000 faculty and staff, and the institution
has a presence in all 160-plus counties
in the state. There are also satellite
campuses in South America, China,
Italy, and various other sites in Europe.

James Stoner: Aside from our laptop
initiative, we have other unique aspects
with respect to our infrastructure. Our
research infrastructure and scientific
research are more important than any
other aspect. We do a lot of genomics and
life sciences, so there's always that
instrumentation aspect, for instance.
Most of our really high-end IT infrastructure
has been accomplished through
collaboration and building relationships
with external companies. That's been our
key in maintaining our budget constraints,
at least in the sciences. The
value-add there is exponential, where we
can use our external technical support to
help maintain our internal IT structure.

Steve Engorn: For the most part, our
setting in both campuses is very rural,
and one is in a valley. They're about six
miles apart. The newer campus in
Owings Mills houses all of our residents;
our older campus in Stevenson has a
number of academic buildings. Our challenge
is to have both campuses act as one,
even though they're six miles apart.

We typically have two phone PBXs so,
based upon how our network has been
structured, it seems you're on one campus
no matter where you are. We're running
voice over IP on both of our campuses to
alleviate wiring costs. And we've done a
lot of construction in a very short period
of time, and we're still doing more.

James Stoner,
University of Denver

"Most of our really high-end
IT infrastructure has been
accomplished through
collaboration and building
relationships with external
companies. That's been our
key in maintaining our
budget constraints."

Ryan Laus: We have a central IT
department, but also have a decentralized
part of IT—different departmental techs
for the colleges. Central IT handles things
like the e-mail and learning systems such
as Blackboard,
networking, and cabling. The colleges,
our distributed folks, handle some of the
specialized faculty and staff needs. We
are very research-attentive. We do undergraduate,
graduate, and doctoral, and
we're trying to make more of a name for
ourselves in the research area.

Stan Gatewood: We're strong in
research in agriculture, veterinary medicine,
and biology. We have a fairly decentralized
IT infrastructure, in that we do
have a central organization that handles
our backbone, our telephone systems, and
our wiring to the buildings, but the
schools—14 schools within our university—
handle their own IT to the desktop.

CT: With the exception of Villa Julie,
it sounds like many of you are dealing
with heavy-duty research needs at your
campuses. How does that affect your IT
budget? How do you go about weighing
what is needed for research against what
is needed for operations for the college
in general, and what your students need?

Gatewood: We have several research
alliances that we're a member of, so we
do get money from those alliances, plus
some of our large grants, et cetera. But
research is headed up by the Office of
the Vice President for Research. He
does have a budget as well as being a
member of the Georgia Research
Alliance and a few other
associations. So his department gets a
piece of the overall University of Georgia
pie as far as budget is concerned,
and it carves out the necessary funding
or monies to work with its research clusters
and its overall IT.

CT: How is that budget faring?

Gatewood: The overall IT budget
health probably needs a booster shot of
B12, just like everyone else's budget.
Monies are getting slimmer and slimmer,
and we have to spread it thinner and
thinner. There's not a whole bunch of
research money out there, but there's
plenty of research to be done. Most of it is
state or federally funded, but we must also measure in or count in such things as the
overall cost of IT—which also has skyrocketed—
and the maintenance, upgrading,
and rescaling of our systems. We're
definitely doing more with less than we
ever have before.

Stoner: We have very much the same
system as Stan has over at Georgia. Our
vice provost for graduate research has a
budget and, in our universe, it's based on
the amount of funding the university has,
plus a small chunk from the university
added to that. So his budget directly
reflects the amount of research the university
is doing, which is interesting
when you think about it. Somewhere
between 5 and maybe 15 percent is the
funding ratio for grant applications right
now—substantially less than it's been
across the years. What we've been doing
is taking the small one- or two-lab IT
infrastructures that were out there, and
migrating them back to a more central
location, so that the funds get used in a
more standardized way, from the support
to the hardware sides of things.

Stan Gatewood,
The University of Georgia

"We have a tremendous amount
of buying power because of our
statewide contracts; we just need
to make sure that everybody
knows about it, because we get
even deeper discounts when
everyone comes together at the
same time to make major PC
purchases, for instance."

CT: So you're using a cluster computing
environment? An IT ‘pool' from
which different research arms or different
departments can access their IT power?
That seems to be an excellent way for the
university to save some money and allocate
resources more evenly.

Stoner: That's exactly what we've
done. We've built a centralized IT function
for things like business functions,
registrar, et cetera. That's all handled by
the university technology services. My
world is very, very specific in the sciences,
so we're one of the distributed
sides of the overall picture.

Laus: We have similar issues. One of
our biggest concerns has been to make
sure that we have sufficient bandwidth
out to the internet so that our professors
and [students] can get the research done
and move the data around when they
need it. So, one of our biggest initiatives
has been to team up with other institutions
across the state, to make sure we
have the sufficient fiber, bandwidth, and
redundancy we need to keep the institution
running.

CT: As a private college, I'm assuming
that Villa Julie has a somewhat different
budget process. Steve, how would you
describe the health of your IT budget?

Engorn: Our college is continuing to
grow. Seven years ago we had 1,200 students;
now we're close to 2,500. Our
goal is 3,000, so our challenge is going
to be to maintain and enhance our infrastructure.
The college is very willing to
support that, because of the increased
enrollment. I have not seen any decreases
in my budget, and I have a strong relationship
with the president, the cabinet,
and the comptroller. We sit down as a
team and decide what we need to fund
for the coming year, based on the goals
and objectives, and it seems to work. I'm
not given carte blanche, so we have to do
a lot of digging to make sure we have the
right solution, and make sure it's the
right price. But we also see some savings
because of the statewide consortium that
was actually started by the university
systems of Maryland, where we now are
able to buy at a very, very reduced rate.
Even as a private institution, I can buy
off of the state contract, which gives me
some leverage. That doesn't mean that
[the state] always gets the best price, but
it gives me a starting point when I'm
negotiating with vendors.

Steve Engorn,
Villa Julie College

"We're planning to pilot a laptop
initiative in the fall, based on the
University of Wisconsin-Stout model,
where they give every incoming
freshman a laptop—either an Apple,
a standard, or a higher-end laptop,
based on what each department is
requiring. We're going to see
significant savings in general
maintenance of labs and so forth."

Gatewood: We have a similar situation.
Basically, we negotiate statewide
contracts, so any state agency under the
governor of the state of Georgia can
purchase out of these contracts. We have
a tremendous amount of buying power;
we just need to make sure that everybody
knows about it, because we get
even deeper discounts when everyone
comes together at the same time to make
major PC purchases, for instance.

CT: Are any of you doing what the
University of Denver has done with its
laptop initiative? Are you finding such
programs help keep your costs down?

Engorn: We're looking at that now,
and plan to pilot a laptop initiative in
the fall. We're actually looking at the
University of Wisconsin-Stout model,
where they give every incoming freshman
a laptop. They have the Apple component, a standard
laptop, and a higher-end laptop,
based on what each department is
requiring. We believe we're going to see
some significant savings overall in general
maintenance of labs and so forth.

Stoner: Our students are responsible
for purchasing their own laptops, but we
have a list of specifications, and preferred
vendors we work with that will do
imaging and so forth.

CT: If you are not providing the laptops,
then how are you handling help desk
requests, for instance? Are you offering
that as a service to the students since you
are requiring them to bring a laptop?

Stoner: We do have a help desk function
that's very well-versed at handling
these things. We will provide the technology
support if students have a disaster,
and we also have deep-discounted student
pricing for a lot of the software packages
we require, so they're actually affordable.

Ryan Laus, Central
Michigan University

"One of our biggest initiatives
has been to team up with other
institutions across the state,
to make sure we have the
sufficient fiber, bandwidth, and
redundancy we need to keep
the institution running."

Laus:We take the same approach both
in terms of requiring students to bring
their own machines, as well as having our
help desk support them. They can call
into the help desk for pretty much any
computer needs they have. We also provide
them with an antivirus package for
free if they don't have one, or if they want
to switch to ours, since they won't have to
pay for the updates on it. We find that
works really well to help keep the cost of
support down. We also have a PC repair
division that is a for-charge service.

CT: Has going with a wired versus a
wireless network—or a hybrid of the
two—had any impact on IT expenditures?

Stoner: We use wireless primarily in
places where it's become either untenable
or too expensive to install wired
outside of the common areas. We use it
as an adjunct to wired or wireless, if we
need to. But the goal is always to come
back to a copper port. Since we have
some old buildings on campus, wireless
is not tenable in some cases.

Gatewood: We're hybrid: We have
wired and wireless, but wireless is pretty
much ubiquitous. One of the things that
we did almost immediately was to [set
up] our own wireless standards. If
schools and institutions and their administrative
offices or units are left to put up
their own wireless, invariably it's going
to be screwed up, down, and unsecured,
and maybe not in that order. So with our
wireless standard, we have pretty much
slid over to the driver's seat, and the central
IT organization is handling all of the
wired and wireless. The support staff can
now focus and train on a given set of hardware,
software, and application issues,
not trying to be everything to everyone.

As far as budget is concerned, we
found that the wireless access points and
the wireless equipment have dropped so
much in price and cost, it's really not
affecting our overall budgets at all. You
can buy a wireless access point for under
$50, and there is no approval process
needed for something so inexpensive.
Still, when it comes to total cost of ownership,
wireless is not all it's cracked up
to be. When you secure wireless versus
wired, the cost jumps exponentially.

Engorn: We don't quite have the wireless
mesh in place, but we will look for
any rogue wireless access points and we
will disable those to keep the networks
secure, decrease the number of security
risks, and ensure adequate bandwidth for
those who are supposed to have access.
We have the software capable of doing
that. At the same time, when we build any
new facility, we're going to make sure
that it's wired and wireless. The issue for
us has primarily been—in a graphics
design classroom, for instance—if I'm
connecting wireless, there just isn't
enough bandwidth to transmit large projects
to and from the server. Now we're
designing classrooms that have the capability
of both. So with this laptop initiative,
we probably will have wireless in the
classrooms, but at the same time, have
wired jacks just in case. The only thing
we're going to require for laptop users is
an extra battery. But I'm not going to be
spending money building rooms that have
many, many outlets, and so forth.

CT: Are schools that moved to wirelessonly
facilities now finding that they have
to go back and install ‘wired' too, after
the fact?

Laus: In our College of Health Professions
building we actually had to go
through and install additional wired
jacks in all of the classrooms because
the wireless did not provide a stable
enough connection. I think there are
quite a few other schools that have experienced
this as well, especially in the
residence halls; students often expect
the wireless network to perform just as
fast as the wired network, but because of
the nature of wireless—all traffic broadcasted—
this is just not possible.

CT: Moving along, I'm wondering
about corporate sponsorships and partnerships,
and how those affect your IT
budgets, be they research dollars or just
overall IT budgets. How much does the
corporate arena play into your IT budget
considerations?

Gatewood: I can't speak for the
institution here, but I think this is what
they're thinking: We'd rather not factor
in the corporate partnerships or sponsorships
because you can't depend on
them. What is really sexy and cool for
corporations today is to partner with big research institutions, but what will it be
tomorrow? A CEO may change overnight
and decide that partnering with research
institutions was a good idea but now is
passé, and so will let it go. Then we're
left with a humongous infrastructure
we've built that depends upon their
money and their resources, and the company
leaves us high and dry. Therefore,
we depend on our own funding and then
the state funding, and other grants and
things like that. We think it's a great
idea to partner and we do have some
very large corporate partners who
donate hardware and software. But as an
overall business decision, you really
can't depend upon that. When and where
we can, we handle our own budgetary
needs. But, again, we're open to, of
course, any collaborative effort, any partnerships
that are out there.

Engorn: We'll build our budget on
what the college can afford. Then if we
end up getting a corporate sponsorship
for a specific project, I may be able to
buy some additional equipment, services,
or software. For example, we had
two distance learning rooms donated to
us by Verizon. Otherwise,
we may not have put them in.
But it was all based upon us moving forward
with an online distance learning
nursing program, so there was a specific
need; the vendor stepped up to the
plate and put the rooms in. We're doing
the same thing with a few other colleges
in the area, and businesses that have put
up some funds for specific projects. We
will then have to incorporate the maintenance
of the equipment or the software
in the future, but the initial outlay
was something that was just an added
bonus, which we would gladly take. At
the same time, we don't rely on that for
our day-to-day, or even five-year plan.

Gatewood: In the past, I created a
security operations center that had vendors'
[donated] products in there. Yet,
when the time came around to renew
licenses and do any special professional
service work, it was almost six to seven
times what it would have cost us to purchase
it ourselves. The bottom line is, we
are very conscious of the fact that [a
company] may have given us something,
but somewhere down the road [we know
that] somebody's got to pay for it.

Stoner: We have the same mechanism.
We'll be more than happy to
involve large corporations and such in
the beginning of our planning processes.
Mostly, though, we try to stay away from
bringing in corporations to sponsor software
licenses, mostly because of what
Stan spoke about. If it's hardware, we're
a little bit more willing to speak with
them. We'll never say no, but it's much
easier from both a budgeting and planning
perspective if we're dealing with
hardware as opposed to software licensing.
Having said that, one of our biggest
donors is a major software facility we've
entered into a long-term, 10-year contract
with. They've been a big player [in
their market space], and they'll always
remain a big player. But I cross my fingers
when I say that; there's a lot of luck
and serendipity involved when you deal
with large corporations.

CT: Let's talk about the cost of maintaining
the IT infrastructure. How do
you factor in the human element and
budget for it? Is it becoming more difficult
to manage each year, and hit goals?

Engorn: My concern—and I think
many institutions would agree—is that
with a relatively small staff, you usually
get a lot done. So, when upper management
is looking at your accomplishments
and project completions for the
year, they say, "Well, you did X amount
of work this year and you got it all done."
But I'm asking for more staff because
I'm actually working my great staff way
too many hours to get the job done, and
they're not going to be able to continue
at this pace. I'm trying to communicate
to the administration that I really need
people in certain areas just in order to
maintain. And as the institution is growing,
individuals lose sight of the fact that
you just can't grow an institution, at least
at our pace, and not increase the IT staff.

"We have to be very conscious of our compensation
packages because we recruit someone, send them to school,
and allow them to dabble with all this high-tech stuff, and
the next thing we know, corporate America
comes along and sweeps an entire network division, or
systems administrators, or network administrators." —Stan Gatewood, The University of Georgia

Gatewood: We're running into
another issue, too: We have to be very
conscious of our compensation packages
because we recruit people, send
them to school, and allow them to dabble
with all this high-tech stuff, and the
next thing we know, corporate America
comes along and sweeps an entire network
division, or systems administrators,
or network administrators. So
we're in the process of taking a very
serious look at the job descriptions and
the role and scope statements and things
like that, because recruiting [good people]
is one thing, but retaining them is
very important as well. Yes, we do factor
in that we're going to have to give
bonuses and merit raises, attract them to
begin with, and then bring them in at a
salary comparable to [that of the private
sector in] Atlanta, which historically
pays more than the state, or the state system or state schools.

Laus: At Central Michigan, we're
severely understaffed. We even had a
survey conducted a couple of years back
and found that we're running at about a
third of the staff we should be carrying
for an institution of our size. The networking
group, for instance, is a staff of
about four, when we should be up somewhere
around 11. So staffing has always
been an issue for us, but it's the same
problem: We do it fairly well, and even
though our network continues to grow,
we're just expected to keep up with it
and continue doing the good job that
we're doing. Some of that is finding
pieces of technology that can help you
manage or make your jobs easier, and
free up some time to do more of the core
networking things that we need to do.

CT: So what advice can you offer a
peer who is looking to create a firstclass
IT network with a limited budget,
and limited manpower?

Stoner: My best advice is: Do your
homework. A lot of us don't do enough
homework, and there's always more
homework you should do. Also, seek out
best practices; that's one of the things that
we've done. At the end of the day, good
planning produces great results. If that
means putting off the project for six to 12
months, you basically need to do that.

Engorn: My advice would be: Collaborate.
Talk to other people at other
institutions who may have done the
same thing, or may be doing the same
thing. We're not doing anything that is
all that much of a secret. I meet monthly
with all the local CIOs of both public
and private institutions and we talk
about everything. It's like a therapy session
in many ways: If one of us has a
question about our direction, there's
nothing to hide. If someone's done
something, we get the benefit of what
they did right and what they did wrong.
So to me, the collaboration with my
peers is crucial.

Laus: Preparation or prior planning
prevents you-know-what. Look at your
options; look at what you really need to
do. If it doesn't fit with the technology
that you have, hold off on that project
until you have all your ducks in a row.
Another thing we try to do is standardize
on things like our network equipment
and some of our network setup.
Because we have such a small staff, we
don't have the time or the ability to learn
a bunch of switch operating systems or
anything else that we need to do with
different vendors and different software,
so we try to standardize on equipment
and network setups and just try to replicate
that across campus so that we can
keep our scope very limited and be good
at what we're trying to do.

Gatewood: My advice is twofold:
First, strategic planning is essential,
because if you don't plan, you will end
up somewhere, and it may not be where
you had hoped. And second, you need to
network. Get out and talk to people of
like-size institutions, maybe even some
that are larger or smaller. Read reports
and work with people, because none of
our networks are islands: If we all connect
to the internet, we're all in it together. I'll
bet you we all have the same issues with
networks, systems administration, and
politics, not to mention the budgets
we're talking about here today. Just get
together with people and share. You
need to learn from them.